Druid builds
=Balance Builds= 51/0/0 Moonkin Balance has traditionally been considered by far the weakest talent spec. With the invention of Moonkin form, it became somewhat viable, if still frowned upon by many. Balance druids will still not match the DPS of a mage, warlock or even shadow priest, but they now bring some interesting capabilties of their own to the table. In PVP, the Moonkin's combination of roots, nukes and excellent damage mitigation make them dangerous opponents. A PVP moonkin build: This build grabs almost every balance talent available. So what wasn't taken? Improved Nature's Grasp and Brambles are controversial talents of dubious value. Improved Faerie Fire, while useful in raids to buff the melee types, is not as useful in PVP. =Feral Builds= 0/41/10 Full Frontal Feral Before 2.0, there was some dispute as to whether going 31 points Feral was really worth it. No more. In the Age of Mangle, feral druids finally can deliver on the DPS they've been hungering for since the game first came out. This build basically runs the feral tree, then dumps a few extra points into some feral-enhancing Restoration talents to round out the build. Omen of Clarity or Mangle? Mangle is clearly better, but have no fear; when then expansion comes out you'll be able to enjoy both at level 61. One example of a full feral build: Note the use of Furor and Naturalist, both very useful in both PVE and PVP. 0/30/21 Feral Hybrid This build is a good balance of Feral DPS and Restoration healing power. The key talents here are Heart of the Wild and Nature's swiftness. This is a powerful build; while it doesn't pack quite the DPS punch of a full feral build, it makes up for it with flexibility. Feral Hybrids can and do heal in battlegrounds, five man instances and raids. In PVP, they are dangerous opponents because of their sheer staying power-- Bash + Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch is like a free new lease on life. There are many variations on this build; a couple examples are below. Raid-friendly hybrid: Improved Mark of the Wild because raiding guilds often demand it. Intensity because it's very useful for longevity when healing. Swiftshifting because it's useful in battlegrounds, especially for flag carrying. A More PVP-centric version: Furor and Nature's Focus are substituted. =Restoration Builds= 1/8/42 Tree of Life Raid Healer: This build takes a touch of feral for soloing, but is mostly designed to be raid-friendly. Nature's Grasp provides much-needed survivability. The Battleground Healbot: Basically, the only difference between this and the raid healer is that this one eschews the mediocre Improved Mark of the Wild for the far more useful Furor. 27/0/24 Mana Efficiency Build Raid Healer: This is a very popular build among raid healers. Moonglow and Tranquil Spirit are the key talents here; talents that give you a 19% reduction in mana costs for most of your healing spells. Nature's Grace and Naturalist help you get those spells off faster. Sadly, there's no room for the always useful Swiftmend in this build. =Pre-2.0 Builds= Here are some previously popular builds for druids. Many are still, with some modification, very viable even after the 2.0 patch changes. However, they will be moved up to the main section as they are converted appropriately. Moonkin Love A Balance Druid focuses on the class' offensive spellcasting abilities. Talents that lower cast times, increase damage, or add special effects to spells are all common in this talent tree. The top talent, Moonkin, gives a +5% chance to spell critical strike buff to the members of the moonkin's party, making this build a caster's best friend and perfect for added dps in a mage-heavy raid. Most balance focused druids will pick up Vengeance for extra crit damage and Dreamstate and Moonglow for mana efficiency and regeneration. A sample PVP Balance build A sample PVE Balance build 14/32/5 Pure Feral One of the most popular post 1.8 builds, the full feral setup is all about maxing melee power. Natural weapons, Predatory Strikes, Heart of the Wild, and Savage Fury all stack together to boost damage output, while Leader of the Pack and Sharpened Claws add to give considerable +crit. With high strength gear and some luck on crits, feral druids can take down targets with rogue-like speed. Feral druids sacrifice some healing ability to achieve high damage, but they are still competent backup healers. This is the build of choice for grinding/leveling, and also gives quite good results in PvP. It does require a bit of adjustment for those switching from a resto build, though. Action is much more fast paced, and the druid needs to remember that he doesn't have Nature's Swiftness for an emergency heal any more. Pure Feral Build Feral Tank Bearform druids spend talents to mimic a warrior's tanking ability. Unlike Def-specced warriors, who focus on the Defense stat, Bearform druids instead focus on high armor (Which, with the right equipment, can reach 15,000+) and stamina for damage soaking. Other useful stats will include dodge/agility for avoidance and agility/strength/+hit/+crit for threat generation. Common talents include Thick Hide, Feral Instinct, Ferocity, Savage Fury and Primal Fury. A sample beartank feral build 11/35/5 - Name's Kitty Feral Catform druid's if combined with correct builds and gear can do decent amounts of damage. The build below is based off of the 14/32/5 Pure Feral build, but more directed to catform druids. You can maximize damage in this build by maximizing your attack power. The only difference in this build is that you will most likely need a healer, because there aren't going to be any points into Natural Shapeshifter. Instead those points will go into Feral Agression, which will give you 15% more damage for Ferocious Bite. You will need to get the Ferocious Bite book five to max out your Ferocious Bite damage. Here it is. Name's 11/35/5 Kitty Feral Build Heavy Resto Far and away the most common druid build before the 1.8 patch, heavy restoration builds continue to be popular for end-game raiding. Resto druids are great healers, especially when paired with a rezzing class, such as shamans or paladins. Nature's Swiftness combined with Healing Touch allows for an instant full-heal on anyone in the druids line of sight, while Swiftmend can easily be combined with rejuve or regrowth to give the druid another quick heal. However, since patch 1.11 the amount of Resto Druids has decreased, due to the fact that the main reason of using 31 talents on the tree before the patch, Innervate, is now available by trainer to those 40 and above, therefore decreasing the need of a Restoration Druid. This, however does not mean that Restoration is useless. In fact, it is even more powerful than ever before. This build is primarily a grouping build. Solo grinding as a resto druid, while having low downtime, is slow. Solo PvP is difficult at best and pathetic at worst. These druids can turn the tide in group PvP, however. A mage being supported with a constant flow of heals and rapidly recharging mana can cause massive damage to enemy formations. 10/0/41 resto/balance sample 0/14/37 resto-feral build 1/11/39 A resto/feral charge PvE/Group PvP healer build 30/21 Feral/Resto Many druids have sworn by this build since the 1.8 druid love patch. Maintaining some of the best traits of the Feral Combat system, and also achieving some excellent healing talents, this build is overall considered the best druid feral PvP Build, as well as one of the more versatile PvE healing builds. With Nature's Swiftness the druid is able to survive pretty well. Insect Swarm helps out wearing down the druid's opponents, and the 30 points in Feral maintain some excellent feral stats, including 20% more intellect. Some variations of the build has come up for PvP, among others the 1/29/21 PvP build that sacrifices one talent in Heart of the Wild for Nature's Grasp. Key talents: Nature's Swiftness, Furor, Feral Charge, Heart of the Wild. After 1.11, Innervate became a trainable spell and not a talent, the healing part got stronger. A sample 30/21 PvE Build A sample 30/21 PvP Build Mana Conservation Resto/Balance Build As of patch 1.11, with Innervate being available to every Druid, a new raiding spec has been floating around. Coined the "24/0/27" build, this assortment of Balance and Restoration spells greatly improves mana efficiency of healing Druids on raids. Going after a total of 19% reduction on most of their common healing spells, the key talents are Moonglow and Tranquil Spirit. Nature's Grace is also thrown in there for some cast time reductions on crits, backed up with Improved Moonfire or Improved Regrowth. Restoration still includes Nature's Swiftness for obvious reasons. This build not only benefits well geared Druids exploring Naxxramas and beyond, but can help an under-geared player who is joining a veteran group for end-game content. The mana conservation gained does much to offset the smaller mana pool and reliability on higher ranks of Healing Touch. Invoker Oni Edit:switching 2 points into Imp. Tranq can greatly improve healing options if a battle goes terribly wrong possibly preventing (rather than recovering from) total wipe. %80 threat reduction + imp thorns on tank = low chance to steal aggro Sample Build Resto/PvP Survival 12/5/34 This is a build for players who are in a serious raiding guild, but don't enjoy being a free honor kill. Many of the encounters in World of Warcraft are centered around high healing efficiency, and as a result most feral specs will be considered subpar. You're primary job in a raid is to heal for most encounters. This build will allow you to be a solid healer as well as provide you with some decent endurance and DPS. It revolves around changing form frequently while on offense. Its main purpose is to reduce casting times on offensive spells, allow you to shift more frequently, and give you the endurance provided by the resto tree. By putting 5/5 into furor, and 3/3 into natural shape shifter, you can shift frequently in and out of bear and cat form as a source of instant rage/energy. In addition with the 5/5 in ferocity, your abilities will cost less, allowing you to shape shift back and forth and spam them a lot more frequently. Sample Resto/Survival Build Multiple gearsets are near a requirement for effective use of this build, as it will utilize all stats when you aren't playing healer. The Animist legs/boots/shoulders from Zul'Gurub are nice because they are easy to get and have high armor and stam/int/spirit. Combine this with a Doomulus Prime or other high strength/stam/agi stat weapon and some other feral gear. Powerlevel Build Level 10 - Nature's Grasp - rank 1/1 This is for the sole reason that it's an EXCELLENT backup when you get ganked. Hammer it on and RUN (if you can't heal and sort them out) Level 11 - Level 15 - Ferocity - rank 5/5 As we're going to be concentrating on levelling as fast as possible we're heading up the Feral Tree as fast as possible. Ferocity is a better choice than Feral Aggression as FE is more for protection, whereas Ferocity helps with attacking. Level 16 - Level 20 - Feral Instinct - rank 5/5 OR Thick Hide - rank 5/5 This is entirely based on your style of play. If you enjoy sneaking up behind enemies in cat form and then shredding them up go for Feral Instinct. If you prefer to just dive straight in and not bother with stealth go for Thick Hide. Level 21 - Level 23 - Sharpened Claws - rank 3/3 6% Crit chance increase. Nice little boost for your feral fighting. Level 24 - Feral Charge - rank 1/1 Great for duels, 1v1 PvP and stopping mobs tagging other ones. Level 25 - Feline Swiftness - rank 1/2 Nothing really significant but a little extra speed in cat form. Level 26 - Lvl 28 - Predatory Strikes - rank 3/3 Attack Power increased by 150% of your level. Now that's a bit better huh? Level 29 - Level 30 - Blood Frenzy - rank 2/2 OR Primal Fury - rank 2/2 Decision time again. Do you fight more in Bear or Cat? Blood Frenzy = Cat, Fury = Bear. Level 31 - Faerie Fire (Feral) - rank 1/1 Saves you having to cast it in caster form. Also helps us get toward better talents. Level 32 - Level 33 - Savage Fury - rank 2/2 20% increase to damage by many of your feral strikes. Level 34 - Feline Swiftness - rank 2/2 Stepping stone. Level 35 - Improved Shred - rank 1/2 Less energy used for Shred... Meh... Level 36 - Level 40 - Heart of the Wild - rank 5/5 Increases your Intellect by 20%. In addition, while in Bear or Dire Bear Form your Stamina is increased by 20% and while in Cat Form your Strength is increased by 20%!!! Now this is what I'm talking about! Level 41 - Leader of the Pack - rank 1/1 Increase in melee crit chance. Level 42 - Level 43 - Blood Frenzy - rank 2/2 OR Primal Fury - rank 2/2 Balancing the Cat and Bear choice from earlier. Level 44 - Improved Shred - rank 2/2 Level 45 - Level 48 - Improved Nature's Grasp - rank 4/4 Stepping stone. Can be useful tho as it increases your rooting chance. Level 49 - Level 53 - Natural Weapons - rank 5/5 10% Damage increase to all strikes. Level 54 - Omen of Clarity - rank 1/1 Gives you a free attack/spell when it activates (the faster you melee the more it'll activate so daggers and cat form help) Level 55 - Lvl 57 - Natural Shapeshifter - rank 3/3 30% decrease in the cost to shapeshift. Level 58 - Level 59 - Brutal Impact - rank 2/2 Slight increase in stun duration for your Bash and Pounce. May also work with Feral Charge but unsure. Level 60 - Respec Resto so you can go and fight big nasty monsters or stay the same if you play on Muchos PvP goodness. Category:Guides Category:Druids Category:Talents Category:Druid Talents